Across the great divide

When Joseph Lieberman was appointed the first Jewish vice-presidential candidate, many said he would alienate the black vote. But aren't Jews and black Americans supposed to be on the same side? Gary Younge on a difficult relationship

Across the great divide

When Joseph Lieberman was appointed the first Jewish vice-presidential candidate, many said he would alienate the black vote. But aren't Jews and black Americans supposed to be on the same side? Gary Younge on a difficult relationship

Monday 6 November 2000 22.05 EST
First published on Monday 6 November 2000 22.05 EST

In Brooklyn's Crown Heights, Sandra Brathwaite stands at the top of her block and delivers an ethnic inventory. "That side is all Jewish," she says, pointing to the right. "And this side is black... well a mix of African-American and Caribbean really. But the Jews have started moving over." As she continues down Eastern Parkway, her vocal audit keeps pace with her stride. "This house is black, that house is black, that one is Jewish, the next three are black, the one after that is Jewish... I could go on."

On one side of the street, the African-American flag flies from the black firefighters hall; on the other, inscriptions on an ambulance and posters on lamp-posts are in Yiddish. Geographically close yet culturally distant, politically united yet mutually antagonistic, once economically interdependent, now socially stratified - the story of the relationship between African-Americans and Jews is long and complex. It is a narrative stretching back through the last century and beyond, which has veered from the inspiring to the horrific. They were once great allies during the civil rights era and within the Democratic party, but more recently have been bitter and sometimes bloody foes.

But now black-Jewish relations seem to be entering a more optimistic, if uncertain phase. The nomination of Joseph Lieberman, a Jewish senator from Connecticut, as running mate to the Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore, has proved an unlikely catalyst for a desire on both sides for greater understanding, if not reconciliation. Lieberman's nomination received the warm endorsement of the Reverend Jesse Jackson - once reviled in the Jewish community for referring to New York as "Heimie town". Lieberman in turn has extended an olive branch to the leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan - the man who branded Judaism "a gutter religion" and called Hitler "a great man". Farrakhan looks as though he may accept. "I would welcome a meeting... it could be a bridge between the black community and the Jewish community," he said.

There has been as much pragmatism in this as principle. African-Americans are the most loyal constituency the Democrats have. Since the second world war the Democratic party has only once won the presidency - with Lyndon Johnson in 1964 - with a majority of the white vote. One of Lieberman's first visits after being officially nominated this summer was to the Congressional black caucus.

Meanwhile, Farrakhan's church is struggling to overcome high-level defections, following accusations of adultery and federal lawsuits alleging sexual harassment. Farrakhan, who is suffering from prostate cancer, is in search of a meaningful legacy. His attempt to cement one earlier this month through the Million Family March failed, thanks to a poor turnout. Reinventing himself as a religious and racial healer rather than an anti-semitic firebreather may be his last hope.

Embarking on this new route has not been without its obstacles on both sides. Explaining the rationale behind Lieberman's selection, Harlem's black newspaper, the Amsterdam News, wrote in an editorial: "The reasoning in the Gore camp went out all over the world to Jews of means: 'You've got to show me the money.' The word went out... that the major protector of Jews in this world, the American government, is now available." Meanwhile, two major Jewish lobbying organisations, the Anti-Defamation League and the Republican Jewish Coalition, urged Lieberman to stay away from Farrakhan.

One reason for this climate of mistrust and antagonism is economic. Pogroms and poverty sent a large number of Jews to America from eastern Europe at the beginning of the last century; roughly the same time that racism and poverty delivered African-Americans from the south to the north. As is the case in Crown Heights today, they often lived cheek by jowl. With access to mortgages, loans or a decent education denied to most African-Americans and granted to Jews - because they were white - an unequal economic relationship soon developed.

James Baldwin, in his essay The Harlem Ghetto, wrote of Jews, particularly Jewish landlords, "They operate in accordance with the American business tradition of exploiting negroes and they are therefore identified with oppression and are hated for it." In short, the standard tension between landlords and tenants or employers and employees took on an ethnic dimension. As Jews advanced economically and moved out of black areas, this particular relationship died, but the prejudice continued.

This is reflected in polling data. "There are certain stereotypes that black Americans are more likely to believe about Jews than white Americans," says Tom Smith, a social scientist at the university of Chicago. "Namely, that Jews are 'unscrupulous in business' and 'mean about money'. In all other aspects they are no more negative than white Americans."

Nor, some are keen to point out, does the fact that both groups endure discrimination mean that they cannot also inflict it. Jews are still white, and African-Americans are still gentiles; the former can still be racist; the latter can still be anti-semitic. Nowhere was this clearer than in Crown Heights almost 10 years ago, after a Hasidic driver ran over a seven-year-old African American boy and was then attacked by a mob. A Hasidic ambulance arrived first and took care of the driver while the boy and his injured cousin had to wait for a city ambulance. The boy died. Hours later black youths killed a rabbinical student in revenge. Riots ensued.

Add an organisation like the Nation of Islam to the mix, says David Bositis, a senior political analyst at the joint centre for political and economic studies in Washington, and the possible points of conflict grow. "Muslims and Jewish people are at odds. Jews are basically white and the NOI's creed is that the devil created white people. On those grounds alone you wouldn't expect them to get on."

Bositis believes that to concentrate on Farrakhan's anti-semitism is to misunderstand both his function and his importance. "He's said a lot of things that are anti-semitic, but the question is, does it represent anything significant about black politics? The answer is no. It may be central to his message but not to his meaning."

None of this makes solidarity between Jews and African-Americans impossible. Far from it. Jews were overrepresented in the struggle for civil rights, partly because they had a keen sense of what it meant to be denied rights. There was an element of self-preservation in it too: the principal target for southern bigotry was blacks, but Jews were not far behind. When legislation came to remove many of the legal barriers to equality, Jews would benefit too.

Because Jews have experienced discrimination first hand, Bositis says, "On balance they are less racist than the typical white person." It is facile to trade off the two groups' completely different experiences of oppression, as though the Holocaust and slavery were two chips in a poker game of victimisation. This not only belittles the suffering but insults the sufferer. In 1926, Louis Marshall, a Jewish jurist and supporter of black rights, addressed the convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People with tales of massacres of Jews in Europe. "We were subject to indignities in comparison with which to sit in a Jim Crow car is to occupy a palace," he said to a stunned and angry audience.

Never were these differences more apparent than in the post-civil rights era of Black Power. "Black people felt they had to assert control of the movement, and there wasn't much room for any whites, including Jewish people, in that," says Smith.

The two groups became estranged by class as well as race and religion. Jews, as a community, got wealthier, while blacks, on the whole, remained at the bottom of the pile. "There are class differences as you would understand them in Europe," says Smith, "in terms of whole culture, education, expectations, rather than just money."

This created tensions that have been most evident around affirmative action - a matter of great importance to African-Americans. Smith says, "Jews are more likely to believe that affirmative action might exacerbate differences than assuage them."

Some say this is because before the war many universities established quotas to restrict Jewish entrants. The quotas were removed, thanks to the struggle for civil rights, but because Jews fought against them on principle then, many still oppose them now. As the commentator Jerome Chanes says: "For Jews, quotas were a way of keeping people out; for African-Americans, quotas were a way of letting people in."

Either way, Lieberman's selection was not a subject for intellectual debate but a matter of urgent political significance. He headed straight for the Congressional black caucus because he had made remarks supporting a Californian proposition to outlaw affirmative action in all state programmes. Moreover, for four years he had been chairman of the Democratic leadership council, representing rightwing Democrats, which often found itself in opposition to liberals such as Jesse Jackson. It was vital that Lieberman kept African-Americans on board.

"He said it is one thing to be the leader of a faction, but another to represent the whole organisation," says Ron Walker at the University of Maryland. "He did convince people that whatever he might have said, he had an impressive voting record on these matters."

Whether this new era of cooperation, if not friendship, will last after the election has yet to be seen. Voltaire said: "One regards the Jews the same way as one regards the negroes, as a species of inferior humanity." Having faced the common enemy of intolerance, there is hope, in some quarters at least, that they may once again find common cause.